


Optical Illusion

by Brigantine



Category: due South
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-25
Updated: 2011-08-25
Packaged: 2017-10-23 01:45:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/244875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brigantine/pseuds/Brigantine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Teen!Ray grows up during a road trip with his cousin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Optical Illusion

The summer after Ray graduated from high school, Stella's parents packed her off to spend the summer at a rich aunt's place in New York, so Ray talked his folks into letting him join his cousin Kevin, who was on break from Northeastern, on a two-man cross-country road trip.

What Ray's parents have never learned is that neither Ray nor Kevin brought enough money to last them there and back, as far west as they traveled. Then one rough night in a bar in Saint George, Utah, Ray discovered that he could make money hustling fights - though maybe it wasn't really hustling, if every time Kevin stood up like a circus barker and warned the opposition that Ray was gonna kick their ass, and often enough there were a few guys in the bar who actually _made_ money off of the scrawny Polish kid, so mostly he got congratulated for winning.

"They never see you coming," Kevin explained to him, once. "They see you standing there, skinny arms, messed up hair, and that little kid grin you got, but they don't see the _real_ you coming at 'em until it's too late."

Maybe that was what happened with Stella. For years she'd been looking at Ray's ratty t-shirts and his beat-up sneakers, and how he always bent over backwards to please her, but then he put on a badge and had to be all of himself every day in order to do his job, and keep himself and his partner alive, and Stella didn't like who the real, whole Ray turned out to be.

There really wasn't much excuse for that. She'd been warned.


End file.
